Hands on with the newer, updated ASUS ROG Ally X 

My favorite thing about ASUS is that the tiniest ding on plastic could cause them to send your ally back unassembled.

7:40 M.2 naming is entirely about the physical size. 2230 is 22mm x 30mm and 2280 is 22mm x 80mm. I'd say the names work pretty well.

"I found the cookies" is the energy I bring to every event

No, sorry, I'm not buying it. After my original Ally burned it's sd card slot I requested RMA but after the repair (which took almost 1 month) the fingerprint sensor didn't work. I requested 2nd RMA and said that I want a refund (in store where I bought my Ally the staff said that after poorly made repair it's eligible for refund because of bad service) but they swapped the same parts as in 1st one and didn't say anything. Now, I'm waiting for 3rd response after sending my Ally to them. It's 2,5 months now from the 1rs RMA and my money is just driving circles.

My backlog is so big and my time to game is so low that I'm still playing games from 2018. I'll stick with the steam deck until it stops running the games I really want to play lol.

That "lol they did" caption had me in stitches 😂

Nope. Staying away of any ASUS stuff. Just watching because I love you Bob ❤

for any new owner I personally think it's also good to weigh their options on the original ROG Ally. I ended up going with an open box Z1E at Best buy for 400 dollars. Bigger battery and ram increase is great, but at "potentially" twice the cost, I'm happy with my OG Z1E

Really cool, but I'm not jumping deck from my steam deck. Customer support matters.

Lovely exterior Useless Windows OS interior Not useful or practical, just get a Nintendo Switch OR Steam Deck

SSD sizes are the dimmensions in millimeters. 22x80mm is the big one, 22x30mm is the square one and 22x42 and 22x60 are the ones nobody cares about. And the big ones tend to have cache and go up to 8TB.

Seems like a solid piece of hardware, but I feel most of us will stick with the Steam Deck. Valve has exceptional customer service, while ASUS does not. Also, SteamOS is just so much better for a handheld… using windows is a frustrating experience. Software is more important to me than having cutting edge hardware.

It's that time now where companies will start making expensive devices with minor changes at a premium markup

Spawnwave has legs 🤯

0:43 I see you SpawnWave 👀

It's all about presentation. You make quality, well edited, curated content. Cheers to that!

The Ally X is actually what I hoped for in a handheld PC. Two USB-C, large battery, the hall effect sticks and easier to tinker with. Now I want to see what battery life is like on games. Then I'll probably wait a year or more for it to drop in price to $700 USD for the holidays or something. Maybe the Ally 2 will drop lol. I got my PC and Odin 2 to keep me busy while I wait.

Bought the Ally when it came out. 1 month later, had SD problems. Sent it in to get fixed. SD went out again last week. Still under warranty, sending it in again to get fix. I like the original Ally, but taking no changes and will sell when it comes back out. I’ll keep using my Steam Deck and wait a few months after this new Ally to comes out to see if there are problems. I’m tired of being a beta tester of their hardware.

$800 dollars is pretty goddamn steep, considering we're still not receiving an OLED panel. Why are they still prioritizing raw power upgrades when they can't even nail down consistency in performance?

I've had the first one since release and have used it almost daily. I've been very happy with it, no issues to report at all even with damn near daily use. Not even any SD issues. I'm tempted to get the X since the lack of vram makes running some games problematic, but I'll wait a while after it's been out to make that decision.

Uk owner of a secondhand Ally here.. my unit had an issue with one of the triggers which wasn’t noticeable unless you were playing a driving game.. anyhoo… RMA was second to none.. fixed and returned in under two weeks with no hassle.

I’m way too poor to buy any of this shit but I enjoyed watching you and Russ talk about it regardless 👍

Palworld and Solitaire hell yeah

4:12 thanks for the shoutout! 😂 great video as always keep it up!

Recently Bought the OG steam deck, I’m happy with that until a device is launched that can emulate PS4 games.

Wow 2024 is definitely the year of the handheld 🎉

Love the shy “bye” at the end Bob!! Great video as always

“One of their phones rang and they yelled at us” I admire your composure, Bob. I would have been kicked out of the venue for verbally assaulting the guy

At 7:42 it's not a dumb name. It's literally the width and depth of the product in millimetres. 1 is 30 mm long and the other is 80 mm long. It makes perfect sense

Nice! Just saw Russ's video

I love the Rog Ally got mines as a Christmas gift and I play it very regularly. However I will not be upgrading I will wait until the 2 releases and all the kinks are dealt with :)

Specs are perfect on this ill get it as soon as best buy has a sale.

All of you together is so wholesome :)

Still happy with my Steam Deck, Vampire Survivors doesn't need any more frames. In all seriousness though it runs everything I want to run and I prefer SteamOS over Windows on these things, especially with all the BS Microsoft's pulling lately. Still, nice to see these handhelds continuing to be a thing!

I would love more collaborations between you and retro game Corp love you guys. 👍I don't really love Asus though. I Heard from Gamers Nexus that their RMAs are pretty bad. I'm good. Even my friend told me it was pretty bad. Thank you for talking about it! I even heard that they were being investigated by the FTC 💀 I would still love to have a windows handheld unlike the steamdeck. Maybe someday!

When buying hardware, I like to take a vacation and just use it 24/7. I’ve bought many Asus laptops. Returned all except one due to problems with them like blue screens and banding. I’ve got a great g14 only took 3 others to get to the great one. If you put a lot of work into it at first the damage will out and no need to deal with rma. I’ve never had to deal with warranty issues with any purchase and I’m an old man.

Linus has an Ally X..just watched a video where he talks about it

Love my launch day Ally. I love the updates they are doing and hope they keep up the iterations. I hope they get to a point where we get a hardware update every 3 years with x version with these kinds of updates in the in between years.

Side Note: (from what I think and other reddit users) actually the real reason why the sd card failed (in most units) is because of a PTC Fuse failure that ASUS used on some (actually a lot) on the sd card reader circuitry and the heat isn't the main problem but i think it helped it, that's why there are actual units with working sd card from the start and other units replaced and they are now working normally(mostly), because i opened 2 ASUS rog ally and saw that between the 2 there is a different fuse between them + the one that has the failed sd reader have its fuse burned out, so i am not confirming that it is 100% true but yeah that's definitely a possibility

the thing about "playing a decent amount of games" on your rog, with my launch rog, i had stick issues after less than 48 hours of minimal gaming and exploration where i had VERY deep cuts in the stem itself, so HOPEFULLY this is ironed out completely tbh

If I’m gonna spend that much money I need an oled screen at the very least I’ll wait until we get a better chipset maybe next year . All I am using it for is emulation so anything would be fine but still

I'm getting the new one they fixed the sc card problem on the new one

Definitely need to be honest when reviewing

A lot of people don't mention the 2280 SSD form factor change in the showcase for the Ally X, which would support up to 8TB drives and drives tend to come cheaper in that more standard form factor and in a wide variety of speed tiers. To me besides the bigger RAM and battery, the 2280 SSD form factor change is a huge plus as well. No need for 3D printed mods to fit a 2280 like you can on the Legion Go. As for a mid-life upgrade or sequel to the Legion Go. It has to keep all the uniqueness & options of the original Legion Go, but change the SSD size from 2242 to 2280 (support Gen 4 as well), bigger RAM either 24GBs like the Ally X or go one step further and just do 32GBs of RAM, and 80+ battery like the Ally X.... I'll pretty sold with those upgrades while keeping everything else the same. For extras: Change Z1 Extreme chip for a more standard 7840U or 8840U equivalent so we don't have to deal with this extreme wait times on OEM drivers... let us get the regular AMD drivers from a regular AMD adrenaline app or from Legion Space if people don't want to interact with AMD adrenaline... but makes them available as soon as any other 7840U/8840U chip gets it in other platforms/form factors of any other PC. If they want to go the extra mile, change the screen to a 16:9 Native Landscape panel to avoid the finickiness of Portrait panels with some apps/games... if not... well... it's a PC, it can be mitigated with Software and some tweaking... but at least that's fixable through software. What's under the hood is priority, and improve the speakers & maybe add an extra USB4 next to the other top one like the Ally X, while keeping the bottom one = making it 3 USB4 ports. They would come out later with it... so it gives me hope that they have the timing advantage to 1-up the Ally X (basically copy their last homework and use the Ally X as a blueprint to further improve on the original Legion Go) further and even undercut in cost with more hardware features. I for one on the change to USB4 eGPUs, is that it's your more versatile can use the ports for other stuff... universal compatibility if most of other devices use the same and forward compatibility for an eventual leap in USB bandwidth and speeds later on with some of a USB5 tech... where it would a very inexpensive upgrade to just change the GPU docking station/enclosure... or the cable & USB output module of the enclosure/dock already supports higher bandwidth then it is just plug and play on a future device that can take higher bandwidth inputs.

I like how this video was just a review of him being there and what changed while the other big channels just dunked on it. Rightfully so, but was not expecting this type of video.

M.2 SSD Names are actually pretty easy/smart if you're metric. They're just the dimensions of the device in millimeters.

you should do a video where u use it as ur main pc :)

Bob putting other people at the event on blast lmao

Ill never forget that I met him twice on the Lirr ( I’m A Conductor ) lol

The best RU-vid channel ever , thanks for your hard work !

I'm a day one owner of the ROG Ally. I haven't had one issue with it. I don't use the micro sd card anyway. I'll probably upgrade the memory and keep using it. I would've bought the new one if I didn't already have it. Love my Steam Deck.

Not going to lie Love the Ally got the original one when it came out and just had the dreaded SD card reader failure. Sent it in got it repaired and now its working fine. Honestly the new one is really tempting because of the ability to attach an affordable EGPU. I could see attaching like a 3060 or 3090 to it and it being a really good compact gaming rig. Especially with that RAM upgrade.

1:01 100000% ign loves to be buttered n expects freed stuff

Well apart from the micro sd card issue that shouldn't be there, I added a 2TB 2280 and never looked back. It's been perfect, the new FSR 3 and AMDs Fluid Motion Frames its game changing, im getting some crazy results, pretty much everything runs above 100fps at 900p i don't even need 720p its insane About the Ally X i cant really consider it an upgrade, if it had an Oled panel and an updated processor, smaller bezels would be more interesting, i dont see myself upgrading anytime soon. About the 2280 ssds you can get an adapter for about 5$ or less from aliexpress and the older model supports the 2280 instead of the 2230 just fine, easy installation anyone can do it

It is crazy Asus manufactured this all ready! Future looks promising.

I love my Rog Ally, I'll stick my current one but if I didn't have I would go for this one.

I'm sad they removed the Xg mobile ports. It transforms the rog ally into a beast pc capable to play games at 4k 120+fps on high to ultra settings. I own both 6850 for my 2k monitor and 4090 for my LG Evo in the living room. Experience is way better.

It’s really weird and unfortunate how ASUS RMA is so bad in the west; my Ally’s right stick stopped functioning about a month after I got it (from a US BestBuy store) and at that time I was traveling in China so I brought it to an authorized RMA center there and it was ready for pickup in perfect shape in just 2 days, without any hassle or costing a cent.

The warranty/RMA thing is a deal killer for this device. It does look good. I have a SteamDeck and won't go to any of these, till the next gen CPU hits....

that event sounds like going to a liberal arts college

The fact they still have not admitted the sd card is insane

That’s cool you got to meet up with Russ, Carey and Spawnwave. 😁

Best bet is to become a total tech member at Best Buy and just exchange it for another or get your money back. Fuck the RMA process.

do not agree to embargos do not allow companies to control your opinion

7.36 thats an NVMe drive not M.2 easy way to remember M.2 has one cut not two more lanes. Also the name is just width plus length in mm. So 22mm by 80mm or 22mm bt 30 mm it's what the small ones are almost square ⬛️.

I was waiting for this launch to get a windows handheld… until the GN video came out. Now I have a legion Go and love the product. I hope Asus can get their act together. Maybe I’ll consider the Ally2 if they fix their process and make good on their warranty.

A wild SpawnWave appears!

The battery in the Ally X should be the standard size for all PC Handhelds moving forward. You shouldn't have to worry about a mobile device lasting for less than two hours...

The redesign isn't that surprising to me. This is just my speculation, but when you spend the level they had to on R&D you're likely to come up with multiple variations on the product's form. It's likely that the feedback they received from users fit one of the unreleased versions of the product. At the very least, they already have a good starting point. The thumbstick changes sound pretty dope though. I have been thinking that the sticks on my steam deck are a little high for me. I wish I could swap in shorter ones like on the xbox pro controller.

Nice to see Jon with a shirt on

I'm done with Asus, sick of getting screwed over by them. I'm one of the several that were affected by their support team.

My biggest problem with all of these devices is the OS. I love my Steamdeck because it is a handheld built for this gaming purpose on the OS level as well! Windows 11 is not a good OS for this use case :( . Microsoft should work a lot harder on it.

As a fellow new yorker, hearing "L I R R" instead of LI double R pained me. lol

If they accepted trade ins for the previous ally, it would help me consider getting it. However, considering the controversies surrounding asus, im scared to get a new device because the original ally was janky and was poorly optimized at launch.

Between my ally and the new one I'm just jealous of the more ram

I had a XG Mobile 4090 saw the new Ally X then returned it thankfully I was still in the return window on Amazon. Bad Asus they could have kept it and just updated the USB C port on the side. I hope Asus updates the XG Mobile with thunderbolt because the size and noise levels were awesome compared to the others out there. I also have a full 2280 ssd in my old Ally with a cheap Chinese adapter and a 4tb name drive works great.

Honestly the new Dpad looks mushy and the old back trigger is the right size. Making it so small will be hard to press.

Having bought my Ally around black friday, I can`t say I feel cheated by this refresh, because the 2 most important specs (processor and the screen) are the same. I have no issues with the ergonomics or controls (other than the dpad that seems quite prone to registering false diagonals in celeste), I upgraded to a 2tb ssd ( and when I check amazon, 2tb 2280 SSDs aren`t that much less than what I payed for my 2tb 2230 micron example), the 2nd usb c is nice, but not that big of a deal to me, cooling and noise was never an issue either (I barely ever run more than 15-18w), the sd card placement change is good, but as far as I know the issue was never actually thermal related, and the fact that my slightly later unit hasn`t failed yet seems to somewhat confirm this. Really the only changes I`m somewhat jealous about are the ram and battery, but even than, I think that most games that would need more system memory and vram than the normal Ally`s shared memory can provide, probably also need more GPU power to run well than what the 780m can offer, and I`ve mostly been trying to tackle the backlog, so by the time I`m ready to tackle the types of games that wouly even signifantly benefit from the spec bump, we`ll brobably be on the deck 2 oled and ALLY 3 X, atleast And I can always get by with a battery bank

I think this looks really cool, but I will never buy another ASUS product after a nightmare RMA for a motherboard a few years back. The GN video just confirmed to me that my experience wasn't the exception.

the switch 2 has some real competition

I never get who cries about XGmobile connector being a proprietary, it’s literally USB C + PCIE. You could still use any eGPU, you just can’t use XGmobile except on X/Z/Ally platform. It is still the best eGPU connector, the best open source that’s close is Oculink and that’s just PCIE

I watch your content because of your personality, and i feel that we have a similar viewpoint on tech I could review a toaster from 8 years ago and i would watch it lol 😆 😂 Keep up the good work 😊

If I was in your shoes I’d tell it like it is so if a company sends you a product that sucks what the heck do they expect ?

Might get it since I have Best Buy warranty on my ally . Can just swap it out

So I want to see what the performance looks like with the vram set to 8gb because with the new 24gb ram size that leaves 16gb for ram after using 8gb for vram seems perfect.

They contacted Dave2D and claimed that the new Ally comes with a FULL 2 year warrenty

I only watch your review videos now first before watching others because it is more well put together I feel. It is more of a cinematic experience sometimes. The others are just like unboxing first impressions. At least you have some time to have a more review that is like well its been out a month here's what sucks, here's what doesn't suck (insert fancy B-Roll and lofi jams) then what do you think at the end? then i'm like yeah I won't buy said product or I will based off of what you say about it, If I am even interested in the product in the first place. I also enjoy the Zim commercials

Yea up here in Canada it’s currently at Best Buy for preorder at $1100…plus 13% tax….FUCCCkKKKk that 😅👎🏻 they can’t even sell the standard Ally over there it’s constantly on sale at $799

i love the oled in the background with the botw screenshot lol

Defeinitely will still watch your SP review. Really interested in your opinions.

Bro I think I met you at a tame impala concert in Brooklyn

The USB C 4 is pretty sick

It really bothers me that they haven't acknowledged the sd card issue was a problem, they make RMAs difficult for people, and they are increasing the price on the new one.

I'm still waiting for more affordable PC handhelds, aside from the Steam Deck, to be more common

Nopes, not buying unless they get their house in order.

An entire comments section written this unit off because of a single GN video, lol. IDK why ya'll need to hear this, but nobody posts a video when a unit works fine or an RMA goes smoothly. The stuff you hear on the internet is only the bad situations. I'm sure this thing has it's problems, but everybody can ONLY talk about that with respect to this unit, and I think that's a shame. Anyway... IMO these are upgrades the Ally should have had from the start, and it's nice that they listened to feedback and did some of them. Definitely none of them are groundbreaking. But that price tag is getting REAL steep for a unit like this. I like that you have better compatibility than the Steam Deck, but it's a big trade-off to make for the price tag, and the performance is definitely better, but not THAT much better. IDK. I hate that the Steam Deck forces Linux gaming on people, I've used WINE for far too many years, but price per dollar the AllyX is just too pricey IMO. They need to get that cost down.

FYI, the sd card issue has now been proven to be a fuse issue on early devices. It was documented by Hackaday with proof. And Asus has now doubled the warranty for free. Can we now stop the false overheating narrative?

Long Island railroad mentioned 🗣️🗣️

5:40 Vinny Pizza Pasta spotted! :D

Name of SSD is only dumb if i dont use metric system. Name 2280 refers to its size 22mm (width) 80mm (lenght). 1 inch is approximatly 25,4mm